Some even were good enough to assist his progress by word and gesture.
"Where are you going, my pretty maid ?" asked Birket of the rosy youth, as he neared his destination.
The poetical suggestion was too much for the Fifth, who caught up the pastoral ditty, and accompanied the measured tread of the wanderer with an undertone chorus of-- "'Where are you going, my pretty maid ?' 'I'm going to dinner, sir,' she said.
'May I go with you, my pretty maid ?' 'Not if I know it, sir,' she said." Coote got used to the pretty melody before the term was over, but just now his sense of music was deadened by the apparition of Dr Winter, who entered by a door at the upper end of the Hall, and walked straight for the chair which the modest novice had looked upon as the goal of his tedious journey.
"Cut back!" said Birket, coming to the rescue just in time, and turning the unhappy boy to the rightabout.

"They've been making a fool of you." Then might have been seen a spotless white figure flying like the wind down the Hall of Templeton, making the place rosy with his blushes, and merry with his hot haste.
Dick and Heathcote caught their brother as he made for the door, and squeezed him in between them at their table, where roast beef and good cheer restored some of his drooping spirits, while the applause of his patrons and the success of the whole adventure went far to reduce the tension which otherwise might have threatened the stability of the "Firm." But after that, Coote felt his confidence in the "two bricks," on whom he had hitherto relied so implicitly, a trifle shaken, and was not quite sure whether, after all, a new boy might not get through his first few days as comfortably without the protection of two bosom friends as with it.
There being very few new boys this term compared with last, he found himself by no means neglected in his walks abroad, and it required all his wariness to elude the gins and pitfalls prepared for him.

Indeed, his very wariness got him into trouble.
After chapel on his second morning Swinstead came to him and said-- "Youngster, you are to go to the Doctor at half-past nine." "Oh, ah!" said Coote to himself, knowingly.

"I know what that means." "Do you hear ?" asked Swinstead.
"I suppose you think I'm green," said the new boy.
Swinstead laughed.
"What on earth should make me think that ?" said he.
Coote chuckled merrily to himself as he saw the senior depart.
"I'm getting over the worst of it," said he to himself.

"They'll soon give up trying it on me.